RA-ISF: Learning to Answer and Understand from Retrieval Augmentation via Iterative Self-Feedback

Yanming Liu, Xinyue Peng, Xuhong Zhang, Weihao Liu, Jianwei Yin, Jiannan Cao, Tianyu Du


Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate exceptional performance in numerous tasks but still heavily rely on knowledge stored in their parameters. Moreover, updating this knowledge incurs high training costs. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methods address this issue by integrating external knowledge. The model can answer questions it couldn’t previously by retrieving knowledge relevant to the query. This approach improves performance in certain scenarios for specific tasks. However, if irrelevant texts are retrieved, it may impair model performance. In this paper, we propose Retrieval Augmented Iterative Self-Feedback (RA-ISF), a framework that iteratively decomposes tasks and processes them in three submodules to enhance the model’s problem-solving capabilities. Experiments show that our method outperforms existing benchmarks, performing well on models like GPT3.5, Llama2, significantly enhancing factual reasoning capabilities and reducing hallucinations.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.281
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
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Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
4730–4749
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.281
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yanming Liu, Xinyue Peng, Xuhong Zhang, Weihao Liu, Jianwei Yin, Jiannan Cao, and Tianyu Du. 2024. RA-ISF: Learning to Answer and Understand from Retrieval Augmentation via Iterative Self-Feedback. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 4730–4749, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
RA-ISF: Learning to Answer and Understand from Retrieval Augmentation via Iterative Self-Feedback (Liu et al., Findings 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.281.pdf